


Black Bullet

by testyTypist



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 03:52:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/testyTypist/pseuds/testyTypist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about criminals. Not the kind that get arrested by the dashing heroes of crime shows and not the kind with tragic and broken lives that are just waiting to be healed or redeemed. This is a story about bad people and the importance of revenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Bullet

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this a while ago and have been meaning to rework it for a while. So, I'm uploading it here so  
> I can do some editing and work on it with feedback.

Zander didn’t want to go to work just yet. He wanted to climb back into bed, where it was warm and where Alex was still sound asleep. It all looked terribly inviting, but he had so many other things to do.

So, instead, he forced himself up and into the shower, and then to his closet, and then downstairs. He forced himself through the motions of his morning, and forced his thoughts away from his bed and boyfriend, both of which seemed warmer and more inviting by the minute.

There was already a car waiting when he stepped outside, into the obnoxiously bright sun. Elliot was sitting in the driver’s seat, his feet propped up in the passenger seat and his back against the driver door. He was reading when Zander knocked on the window, but he was quick to sit upright and unlock the door.

“Took you long enough,” Elliot said, as Zander sat down. “I’ve been out here twenty minutes or so.”

Zander frowned. “Why?”

“On time is late,” Elliot reminded him. “I am never late. Buckle.”

“That’s such a dumb saying.” Zander did as he was told and buckled his seatbelt. “On time is on time. All you got from being early was twenty minute of sitting around outside my house, reading. Now, what did you gain from that?”

Elliot thought about that as he started the car and pulled out into the street. “It got me twenty minutes of peace. I need that time to get ready to deal with you.”

“Fair enough.” Zander smiled and stared out the window as his house got further and further away. “So, why so early?”

Elliot shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know? The Chief tells you about the same as he tells me. Neither of us knows anything until the last minute.”

The sad truth of working for such a secretive operation. Everything was need-to-know, and the Chief only sometimes thought that either of them needed to know. So many things would have been nice to know before the last minute, but it wasn’t like they could complain to their boss. They hadn’t even really seen him in person. He sought them out; not the other way around. Their job was to wait patiently and do what they were told.

Last night, both Elliot and Zander had gotten word that they needed to show up to the office the next day, and they needed to be there early. Something big was happening. They probably had a job to do, but Zander couldn’t imagine why it would be so time-sensitive. And if they were working on a tight deadline, why would they just be hearing about it now?

“Shelly was pretty bummed about me leaving early,” Elliot said. “We were supposed to do something today. I’ll have to make it up to her somehow. And Marshall. He’s gonna be disappointed.”

“Marshall’s two,” Zander reminded his friend. “He’ll be disappointed for about a second, and then he’ll get distracted by something else. It’s Shelly you gotta worry about forgiving you.”

Elliot shook his head. “A kid remembers their parents breaking promises. I remember my dad spending time with us when I was little. And I would have remembered if he had bailed on us at the last minute.”

“Make it up to him tonight,” Zander suggested. “And take Shelly out sometime or something. I think you owe her about three date nights now.”

Elliot cringed. “Oh, that’s right. I have a lot more making up to do than I thought, I guess.”

“And to think,” Zander mused, “you could have spent twenty extra minutes were her this morning.”

“We wake up at five,” Elliot grinned. “She and I had some coffee together and sat out on the porch. We’re early birds. You have to be if you wanna spend time together with a little kid around.”

“Alex was still asleep when I left. He’s not exactly a morning person.”

“Poor you.” Elliot shook his head. “And you were making fun of my morning plans. You didn’t even have any.”

Zander frowned. “I don’t have to wake up at five to spend time with my boyfriend. We don’t have a baby toddling around all the time. I’d say I win this one.”

Elliot laughed. “Man, you don’t even know. Babies are great. I mean, they’re little nightmares, but they’re just the coolest things. I can’t imagine not being a father now.”

It had been like this for two years now. Elliot had been thrilled when they had been pregnant with Marshall. He had gone on and on to Zander about his excitement through the pregnancy, and for the past two years now. It was sweet, but it worried Zander too. With the kind of work they did, it wasn’t exactly advised to have a significant other, and it was even more risky having children. Anything could happen. It had to be nerve-wracking to throw a baby into the mix.

And now they were throwing another one in. Shelly was six months pregnant with another one. Elliot had been going on about that lately too. They were having a little girl, and Elliot couldn’t have been more proud.

It was probably stupid for Zander to have a boyfriend living with him too, but he acknowledged that. At least it wasn’t as dumb as having babies around. Alex was pretty helpless, but not quite that helpless.

When they pulled into the parking lot, Zander wasn’t thinking about Alex or babies anymore. He was ready to go to work. Elliot was suddenly more serious too. He was back to the state of mind he needed to put himself in to get to work.

It was a fairly normal building. The Collective’s headquarters passed very easily for an insurance company, and they did have a decent cover operation going. In a way, it could have been called an insurance company; just not the kind of insurance that could be advertised to the general public.

When Zander got to his office, Daffodil was stumbling in at the same time.

“Aren’t you supposed to get here before me?” he asked her. “Isn’t that a part of your job description?”

“It is,” Daffodil agreed. “But I didn’t find out until just last night that I was going to have to be here early.”

“Me neither,” Zander said. “But I managed to get here at a reasonable time.”

Daffodil hardly acknowledged criticism from him anymore. It was just a part of her daily routine. Instead, she set t arranging her desk and going through messages that she had missed in the night and early morning.

“The Chief emailed me just a couple minutes ago,” Daffodil informed him. “He wants you in an hour.”

“Where?” As if he couldn’t guess.

“The Pit of Despair.” She closed the email and leaned back in her chair. “I figured you’d be able to guess that.” 

“You should never assume,” Zander scolded. “You know what happens when you assume?”

“Some saying that I can never remember?” Daffodil guessed. “I was never good at remembering sayings.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you too,” Zander sighed. “I feel like someone applying to be a secretary should have better memory.”

“You’d think so,” Daffodil agreed. “But, here I am, so apparently not.”

Zander had wondered why Daffodil was working here at first, but it was probably easier to have someone around a shady business who was genuinely clueless most of the time.

“Is there not a dress code here?” Zander asked her, while they were on the subject of things Daffodil did that confused him. “Is it possible for you to wear something that doesn’t make your tits look like they’re going to fall out?”

Daffodil glanced down at them like she had forgotten they were there and shrugged. “Oh. I don’t know if I own anything like that.”

“Of course not.”

“You’re the only one complaining though,” she said. “I think most people appreciate their presence in a room.”

That didn’t surprise him. “So, I have an hour before the boss wants me?”

“Yep.” Daffodil sounded far too chipper for seven in the morning. “You’re expected at eight, in The Pit of Despair, with Elliot and Nolen. That is what I was told.”

“So why did I have to be here by seven?”

Daffodil shrugged. “I’m not sure. No one really tells me a lot. But do you want some coffee. I’m thinking of starting some. It doesn’t look like anyone’s made any in the copy room.”

“I don’t really do coffee,” he reminded her, like he had to most mornings.

“Okay. More for everyone else then, I guess.”

Daffodil hopped up and rushed off to the copy room to make herself some coffee that she probably didn’t need to wake her up.

Zander decided he would go to Nolen about the summons they had all apparently received. He didn’t particularly feel like talking to Nolen, but it looked like he was going to have to work with him for a while.

In the elevator to Nolen’s office, he was even more annoyed to find Neela in the elevator, heading to the same floor.

He never figured out what it was about Neela that he didn’t trust, but he never felt like turning his back to her. She was just as nervous to turn her back on him, and they spent the whole ride up with their backs firmly against the wall.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Nolen?”

“Yes.”

Neela sighed. “I was headed up there first.”

“I have to see him,” Zander said. “We’re on assignment together.”

“He’s not on assignment.”

“He’s about to be,” Zander informed her. “The Chief wants to see us both in an hour for a job.”

“So you don’t have anything to say to him for an hour,” she said smugly. “I get to see him first.”

The elevator doors opened.

“I could knock you out and leave you in this elevator,” he told her as they stepped out.

Neela smiled. “I have a gun somewhere on my person. And I guarantee you I can get to it before you even see it.”

She was wearing a black dress and boots. He was going to guess the gun was in a boot, if she really had one, but he doubted she did. If she did, his second guess would be strapped to her thigh. The dress was loose around her legs. She was great at concealing weapons, but he was great at it too, and he was better than her at predicting someone else’s moves.

They both began a brisk walk down the hallway, trying to stay ahead of one another. He had wider steps, but she was small. She was built close to the ground, for speed.

They both hit the doorway at the same time and tried to shove each other out of the way. Zander shoved her back, but she elbowed him in the back and slipped past him.

Nolen was sitting at his desk, watching the show in stunned silence.

“Are you two fighting over me?” he asked anxiously.

“I need to talk to you about a job,” Zander told him as quickly as he could. He wanted to get that in before Neela could say anything else.

“I need to talk to you about that thing you’re working on,” Neela informed him meaningfully. “You know.”

At that moment, Zander realized that he had lost this one. Nolen ushered Neela in and closed the door. Zander sat down in the waiting area in the hall, plotting his revenge.

 

“What have you got?” Nolen asked. He was al business now, back straight and hands folded neatly on his desk.

Neela sat herself down in the chair across from him. “Agents X and Y are alive. They’re still on Lazmine’s payroll too, meaning they’re not really retired.”

Nolen wasn’t sure what to make of what she was telling him. “What does that mean for us?”

“That two incredibly dangerous experts are still alive and in the employ of our rivals,” Neela told him slowly, breaking it down like she was talking to a child. “Does that not worry you at all?”

“How’d you even find that out?”

“I was in Lazmine’s offices,” Neela explained with a shrug, like it was just a normal outing. “There’s still a mailbox for them and there’s still bills being put in them. I couldn’t get close enough to see their actual names though. But I think that’s what the Chief’s about to put you on.”

Nolen narrowed his eyes. “Does the Chief know that you’re getting into Lazmine?”

“The Chief sent me,” Neela said. “He wanted me to get an estimate on how many agents they have on their payroll. But I had no idea I’d see X and Y on that list.”

No one really had. Most of the Collective assumed that Agents X and Y were dead. They had dropped off the face of the earth after their assassination of Lazmine’s previous director, and everyone assumed the new director had quietly had the terminated, to protect his position. It was just a rumor, but it was a widely accepted rumor. It was starting to occur to Nolen though, that maybe they had been meant to believe that rumor. It was easier if they believed that Agents X and Y were no longer a threat to them.

“Why would the Chief want me on that now?” Nolen asked.

“Because I reported to him last night that Agents X and Y are alive, and immediately after, you, Elliot, and Zander get calls telling you to come in early for something important.” It all seemed so obvious to Neela. “That’s pretty convenient timing, if you ask me.”

Nolen had been hired to the Collective for his abilities as a hacker. If anyone would be asked to somehow get into Lazmine’s private and high-security files, it would be Nolen. And, if anyone would be asked to find and terminate Agents X and Y, it would be Zander and Elliot. They were the best of the best on sensitive cases.

“That’ll be a huge hit to Lazmine.” The reality was dawning at him as he said it. “That’ll be like us declaring all out war on them.”

“I think that’s just what we’re doing,” Neela said, leaning forwards and speaking more quietly now. “I think we’re about to cross the line. Are you ready?”

 

At exactly eight o clock, Zander, Elliot, and Nolen were standing outside The Pit of Despair (a.k.a. the Chief’s office), braced for whatever news they were about to hear.

The office was dark when they walked in, as it always was. The Chief was sitting in a high-backed chair behind a desk, shadowed enough that they couldn’t see anything about the person in front of them.

“You wanted to see us?” Nolen asked. Of course the suck-up would be the one to talk.

“Clearly,” the Chief said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be standing here.”

His voice was distorted by some kind of voice changing device, as usual. The Chief preferred to remain a mystery, even to his most trusted staff. Who could blame him though? With the work he was in, he had put himself in a delicate position.

“I think Nolen thinks he knows why you’re here,” the Chief said, after the red had faded from Nolen’s face. “And he’s partly right. Nolen, I need you to get into Lazmine’s employee files, and I need you to find the identities and locations of Agents X and Y. Can you do it in a week?”

“I should be able to.” Any other job would have been done in a week, probably in a few days, but Lazmine was prepared for people like him trying to access their information. They were protected by layers and layers of security. It would take him a week at least to get through all of it without being discovered.

“In the meantime, I want you two,” he said to Zander and Elliot, “to work closely with Nolen and find out what you can about Agents X and Y. And, when you get a hold of them, I want you to find out everything you can about the director of Lazmine. Because I want him dead.”

“You want us to kill the director of Lazmine?” Elliot repeated, clearly shocked.

“Eventually, yes,” the Chief confirmed. “Right now, I just want you to be ready to kill the director of Lazmine. Also, Agents X and Y, once you get everything you can out of them.”

“Neela was right,” Nolen said. “You want to take Lazmine down, once and for all.”

“Bingo,” the Chief said.

“Why now?” Zander asked. “I mean, if I may ask.”

“You already did,” the Chief reminded him, but he sounded amused. “Rest assured, Zander, there is a reason behind everything I do. This is something that’s been coming for a long time, and now it’s our move. When I can tell you more, I will. Until then, I trust you’ll do your job to the best of your ability.”

“Of course,” all three men said, talking over each other to get the words of assurance out.

“Good.” The Chief’s chair creaked, like he had just leaned back in it. It sounded relaxed. Thankfully, he seemed pleased with what he was hearing. “I’d like you to get started right away, and I’d like you to get started on it outside of this office, Nolen. Work from home, like you usually do on things like this. You have everything you need there, and anything you don’t have, I’ll make sure you get.”

Nolen had quite the setup in his basement, paid for by the company. Their best technical information gatherer had to have the best of anything that could make him better at his job. It was no different from the weapons budget Zander and Elliot had access to. The Collective made sure its agents were well taken care of.

“I’ll get right on it,” Nolen said. “I’ll check out right now and head to the home office.”

“Good,” the Chief said. “Keep me informed on anything you find, and make sure Zander and Elliot stay in the loop. If you have anything important to say, call their business phones. We can’t afford this getting out.”

Their business lines were as secure as they could get, another precaution taken by the company.

“Zander, Elliot, I want you watching in the meantime,” the Chief instructed. “I want you keeping an eye on their headquarters the best you can, but I also want you to be ready to move. Things’ll be slow at first, but then everything could change very quickly. Be rested up and be waiting for further orders.”

They stood awkwardly for a while, waiting to see if there was anything else to do, but the Chief dismissed them to kill time before they started.

 

The night they got the assignment that would change everything, Elliot and Zander treated it like any other night. They stopped by a bar on their way home. Elliot drank and Zander didn’t. Zander never drank, but he tagged along with his friend anyway because he didn’t have much else to do. Besides, this was normal people bonding, which Zander had never felt they did enough of.

“Shelly’s not gonna like this,” Elliot said. “She was hoping we’d keep having a slow month. She’s liked the free time I’ve had.”

“She still wants you to retire?” Zander asked, as if it was even a question.

“Ever since Marshall was born, she’s been more and more worried about my job.” Elliot couldn’t say he blamed her. “I don’t think I’ll tell her anything about this job. No need to worry her.”

Zander raised an eyebrow. “I can’t believe you tell your wife anything about your jobs. Is that even safe?”

“Probably not,” Elliot admitted. “But I try to keep her in the loop. I can’t understand why Alex is so okay with you telling him nothing about your work. You just tell him that you can’t say anything about your job or anything, give him convincing lies to tell anyone who asks, which he knows aren’t true, and he just says okay and moves on with his life?”

Zander shrugged. “He doesn’t want to know.”

“My wife doesn’t wanna know the details, but she wants to know the basics, you know?” Elliot said. “And she’s in on the contingency plan, in case I ever need to get her and Marshall somewhere safe. Alex should at least know that.”

“If he ever needs to go into hiding, I’d send him with Shelly and Marshall,” Zander explained. “They’ll make sure he gets where he needs to know. I trust Shelly. She’s a smart lady.”

“She is,” Elliot agreed. “Which is why she deserves to know, and that’s the same reason Alex needs to know.”

There wasn’t much of an argument to make against that, so Zander decided he wasn’t going to even contribute to this.

“What if this all goes badly?” Elliot asked. “He’ll need to know if all hell breaks loose.”

“We’ll deal with that as it happens,” Zander said. “Hopefully we won’t have to deal with it at all though.”

Elliot and Zander ran into Kiri, leaving the bar. It was in the right part of town that they saw her around all the time. It was early in the day though, so she was mostly just wandering.

Today, she was on her way to the store.

It seemed odd to Zander sometimes that he had prostitute friends, but he got over that pretty quickly. He was stripping, after all. They weren’t the same thing, but both were technically sex work. It was like their jobs were distantly related.

Kiri and Zander had met outside of work though, and neither had said a lot about the other’s profession at first. They had met when they had both been working one night and had both found themselves on a late bus, killing time until they could go home.

They had bonded over Kiri’s knowledge of weaponry, and the conversation topics had spun off from there.

Lila was with Kiri pretty constantly, so they were sort of like a packaged deal, sometimes literally. They were nice people and they knew about plenty of things Zander couldn’t exactly talk about with anyone else, outside of his coworkers. There was something off about them, but he’d never tried to find out what it was. They were as entitled to their secrets as he was to his.

“You know how many different kinds of tea that weird corner store sells?” Kiri asked when she saw familiar faces.

Elliot decided he might as well bite. “No. How many?”

“Hundreds. I’m not even exaggerating. It’s like heaven, but without the dying part.”

For someone in such a jading line of work, Kiri was cheery more often than not, especially when pretty clothes or tea were involved. She had always enjoyed tea.

She had thought about retiring with Lila and opening a tea shop, but the economy wasn’t good. It would be a bad time to try a weird niche business. So they continued working on the streets.

They planned to part ways at Elliot’s car, but he offered her a ride to the store. He always felt like doing little things to help her when he could. It made him sad that she had ended up hooking. She never seemed as upset about it as he was. He treated her especially nice because of it though, so she had given up on trying to convince him that she was okay with her career.

After dropping Kiri off, Elliot was getting more anxious about what he was going to tell his wife about what had been so important this morning, and about what his job was now. It was one that could very easily get them all in trouble. Didn’t she deserve to know?

He didn’t ask Zander. Zander would tell him no. No, she didn’t need to know anything. He had no problem leaving his significant other in the dark, and he assumed that everyone else should be too.

At dinner, Elliot was quiet. He was thankful for Marshall’s constant chatter. It gave them a distraction from important conversations.

After a while though, Shelly had to ask the question. “How was work?”

“Interesting.”

Shelly frowned and sat her fork down. “How interesting are we talking?”

“Nothing to worry about,” he assured her.

Shelly was skeptical. “So I shouldn’t be worried at all?”

That sounded a lot like a trick question to Elliot. “You shouldn’t be more worried than you usually are.” He offered her a reassuring smile. “Really. Everything is okay.”

Marshall chose that moment to take a handful of his peas and shove them in his mouth, mostly missing and sending them tumbling to the floor. He knew how to use utensils; he just didn’t always feel like bothering with them.

“Sweetie, use your spoon,” Shelly advised. “Like Daddy’s doing, okay?”

Elliot reached over and placed the spoon back in his hand.

“Everything is fine,” Elliot repeated. He wasn’t sure which one of them he was talking to. Maybe he was talking to himself.

“We’re ready, in case we ever need to be,” Shelly reminded him.

“But you don’t.”

She only partially believed him, but there was no point in worrying herself over it for long. If things got bad, he would let her know. Until then, it was best to try to act like a normal family.

 

Zander acted the same as ever when Elliot dropped him off; Alex didn’t think to ask anything. Besides, his first instinct was to not ask anything.

Ignorance really did seem to be bliss, because Alex seemed happy not knowing anything. There was so much less for him to worry about and he didn’t have to think about the consequences of the life they were living. He didn’t even realize what kind of a life they were living.

Zander hardly thought about the job when he got home. It was easy for him to leave his work behind when he stepped inside of his home. His brain was made up of rows of neat, separate compartments, and the contents rarely touched one another.

“Shelly’s having a baby shower,” Alex announced, when a more-than-acceptable silence had passed. Alex had never enjoyed silence, but he tried to grant Zander some when he could.

“I assumed she would,” Zander said. “She had one for the last one.”

“Did she invite you?”

“No,” Zander said. “Aren’t women usually the only ones invited to baby showers?”

“Usually,” Alex agreed. “A lot of Shelly’s friends from the hospital are dudes though, so she invited us.”

Technically she had invited Alex, and then Zander as an afterthought, but there was no reason to mention that.

There were so many things that sounded more interesting to Zander than a baby shower. Unfortunately, Alex was talking like he actually wanted to go.

“What do they even do at baby showers?” It wasn’t like he had a reference point for this.

Alex seemed just as lost. “I’m not actually sure. But it’s Shelly. I love Shelly.”

“She likes you too.”

That made Alex smile. “Elliot’s gonna have Marshall for the day. So, if you don’t feel like going, you could probably help him babysit.”

“Marshall does like me,” Zander admitted.

“Exactly.”

Zander got tired of pacing the kitchen after a while and sat down with Alex on the couch.

“How was work?” Zander asked him, since Alex had a job that they could actually discuss without having to worry about coming up with a plausible story.

“Same as always,” Alex replied. “People are stupid. I never want to leave the house again.”

“I know the feeling,” Zander assured him, even though he loved his own job. “You know, you don’t have to take as many hours if you don’t want to. We’re fine on money.”

“I know.” Alex felt a little less awkward every time this became a part of the discussion, but he was getting better at it. “I’d go crazy if I was here by myself all the time though. I hate dealing with people, but I really do need to get out of the house.”

“I know.” Zander smiled. “I’m just reminding you. If it gets too awful, no one’s making you stay there.”

The fact that they had the money now to let him decide whether he even wanted to keep his job or not made him nervous. It raised so many unasked questions, and it made him feel kind of like a gold-digger.

So it was yet another one of the things Alex pretended not to notice about Zander and his many, many secrets.

 

For Madora, calling in her contacts and favors was getting to be a shorter process every time. Over the years, the people who used to support her were dead or retired. Some of them had moved on and turned their backs on her. Crossing names off her list was a painful process, but it was one she was getting used to.

Crossing Valentine off the list was something she wasn’t ready for yet, but thankfully that time had yet to come.

He was in his fifties now, but he was one of the few people who still considered her a friend as well as an ally.

She limped up the stairs to his office, silently cursing him for working at a place that put him so high off the ground, but everyone needed a day job. And, aside from working with her from time to time, he had retired from a life of crime. It was getting to the point where his day job was all he had left.

Madora stopped on the fifth floor landing and took a swig of the concoction she had mixed up in her flask. It burned her throat, but it made her feel a little more like she could make the trip up.

She gathered her courage – some of it liquid – and continued the slow trek.

On the eighth floor, she breathed a sigh of relief and pushed the door opened. Her leg was on fire, and it had shot up her spine, but she was here.

She didn’t even acknowledge anyone else in the office, including the floor secretary, and walked right into his office. He had a client, but she sat in a chair in the corner and grabbed a magazine.

Valentine subscribed to a lot of law magazines. When he had gone legal, he had gone all the way.

His client paused to glance back at Madora, but Valentine assured her that she could ignore the intruder. She was a coworker.

Madora flipped through the magazine and waited for the client to leave.

When the women had left and closed the door, Valentine tried his best to be annoyed with Madora.

“Now, you don’t see me walking into your office unannounced, do you?” he asked her.

“Oh, you’d never visit me,” she said. She moved into the chair across from him where his client had been sitting when she had walked in. “You make me climb all these damn stairs just to see you.”

“There is an elevator,” he reminded her.

“It’s always so crowded,” she scowled. “You know how I hate crowds.”

“I remember.”

Sam “Valentine” Somerland had been a friend of the family since Madora was little. Many of her parents’ old friends had turned their backs on her, but not Valentine.

“I’m in some trouble, Val.” She was suddenly serious. “I might need some legal counsel real soon.”

“I thought you might be coming to see me,” he said. “I heard it through the grapevine that Lazmine’s finally gotten sick of you.”

“I’ve heard that too.” She took her flask out again and took a long drink of the searing liquid. “We were here first, but somewhere along the line, they got better than us. I guess they finally got sick of the competition.”

“You think this is the end of the Collective?” Valentine asked.

“Not yet, but our days are numbered.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Valentine said, with genuine remorse in his smooth voice. “Now I feel even worse about the bad news I’ve got for you.”

Madora couldn’t say that she was surprised. Trouble seldom traveled alone.

“What’s your news?”

Valentine answered by taking a postcard out of his desk drawer and pushing it across the desk so Madora could read it. It was a cityscape, and stamped across it were the words: Greetings from Berlin!

Madora blanched. “When did you get this?”

“It came in the mail this morning.”

Madora turned the postcard over. All the back said was, “5/10/12. See you soon.”

“Today’s the fifth,” Madora thought out loud. “She’ll be here in five days.”

“That’s what it sounds like,” Valentine agreed.

Madora felt sick. The timing was just too perfect. “You don’t think she got an offer from Lazmine, do you?”

“I doubt she’d take a contract on you.”

Madora wasn’t as confident as Valentine. Berlin was an opportunist. She’d think nothing of accepting the job, for the right price. Business was business to her, and that was why she was the best.

“Why would she be here?” Madora demanded. “What the fuck is that bitch doing in my town?”

“I have no idea why Berlin does anything she does,” Valentine admitted. “That girl’s always been a little different.”

That was the biggest understatement Madora had heard in a long time.

Madora still had a death grip on the postcard. She was too shocked to take her eyes off of it. Madora had had enough of Berlin to last her a few lifetimes. Everywhere Berlin went, trouble followed. Madora would have been happy never to see her again.

“But you said you need legal help,” Valentine pressed.

“Well, not me. Some of my employees might need a lawyer. Some might need help getting out of the country. Some might need wills.” Madora forced herself to sit the postcard down. This was more important. “If I’m right – and I am – things are about to get ugly.”

“Are you calling for backup?”

Madora shook her head. “I don’t know enough people who’d be willing to help me. I’ve made more enemies than friends. I have some of my people working on the problem, as we speak.”

“I’m sure you have a plan B in place,” Valentine guessed. Madora wasn’t always successful the first time, but she always had a comeback planned.

“Plan B is already in progress,” Madora assured him. “I have some of my best men on it.”

“Why aren’t your best men on Plan A?” he wanted to know.

“Both plans require different skill sets. Plan A is mostly investigation, and Plan B will eventually be mostly action. Plan B will take a week to get off the ground though.”

“So soon?” Valentine was puzzled. “What about Plan A?”

“Plan A will most likely fail in days.” It was hard for her to say, but it was a reality that she was having to accept. “It’s grim, but it’s true. Lazmine’s outsmarted me. There might not be a way to win.”

Valentine frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve doomed us,” she said. “I’ve destroyed everything I’ve built, Val. I trusted the wrong person.”

“Who?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know who it is, but someone’s betrayed me. One of my own, and I didn’t even see it.” This was the realization that had been tormenting her. The end was coming and it was all her fault.

“I’m sure you did your best, Madora,” Valentine assured her.

“That’s precisely the problem,” Madora chuckled. “I did my best. And my best, once again, was nowhere near enough. I did my best, and I’m about to lose everything. Everyone who works for me is about to lose everything.”

It was hard not to mope. She had been trying to be strong about it, but it was getting to her. She had built the Collective from the ground up over twenty years ago, and she had poured her whole life into it. There was nothing for her outside of the Collective now. She had handpicked every one of her employees, and she had trained and prepared them. They were her pride and joy, and now everything was going away. All of it had been for nothing.

“It’s not over yet,” Valentine said. She needed to hear it right now, whether it was true or not.

“Really?”

“Of course not,” he said. “There’s still Plan B.”


End file.
